Dr Glen Judson from Agricom New Zealand was on hand to answer any questions or issues local farmers and graziers had.

Dr Judson is Program Leader for Animal Nutrition at Agricom.

Mr Keith was extremely happy with the turnout of many local farmers and graziers keen to know more.

“The response, the attitude and the involvement of the group has been sensational,” Mr Keith said.

“We’ve been going since ten o’clock this morning, and it’s now 12:30 pm, and the crowd is still standing around well engaged in discussions with Dr Judson and myself and our other representatives Kathryn Pengilly and Nathan Selmes.

We have found on previous occasions that it’s been very hard to get people to come to these sort of events, so the roll up today’s been phenomenal.

I don’t think we’ve had another field day like it for a long time, and we’re also very appreciative of the local re-sellers and particularly Goulburn Produce for helping us organise today and of course the farm owners and managers Chick Olson, Nathan Selmes and Tony Morrison.”

Mr Keith explained that having Dr Judson staying in Goulburn for the past week was a prime opportunity to have him here to take a look at what we’ve been doing,” Mr Keith said.

“We’re standing in a paddock of tonic plantain at the moment and we also had a look at some ryegrass at Mr Morrison’s property.

We were also looking over all the other paddocks at what else has been happening at the moment.”

Mr Keith said the aim of the day was to get local farmers and producers to understand and realise there were other options out there in terms of their weed management.

“We’ve also been getting them to understand a bit about their systems and how they can maximise and/or optimise their productivity from what they may have originally been doing,” Mr Keith said.

“There’s no need necessarily to go and make massive changes, but there are some other products out there that we believe are very well suited to not only the environment, but also a particular farming system.

Basically we hoped today would be about educating, informing and enlightening these farmers and producers a little bit, and to inform them that the information is available.”

Mr Keith said that the main focus of the field day was more on the ‘how’ and the why’ rather than the ‘what’.

“It’s very easy to provide the product to do the job, but you’ve got to ask a lot of questions before you get to that answer,” Mr Keith said.

Addition of feed options such as forage brassica and plantain helps not only the livestock that feed on it but they also help to regenerate the health of the paddock the animals are in.

Plantain, for example can provide exceptional winter growth compared to other perennial pastures and provides excellent recovery from grazing or after periods of moisture stress.

Owner of ‘Royal Oak’, Chick Olson has been using plantain on his 5,000 acre property 10 kms northwest of Goulburn.

He explained more about the nature of his property.

“Our property is primarily a research facility for supplements and other interests such as tri-solfen, so it isn’t too intensive on lamb production,” Mr Olson said.

“We do however like looking at new options and particularly more productive plant variants to ‘turn off’ lambs in time.

We will be planting more types of deep-rooted crops, as they do boost production, especially when we can design a supplemented Molasses/Minerals and Magnesium (MMM) block to compliment quicker lamb turnoff.”